In a departure from its recent conciliatory stance toward South Korea, North Korea resumed its verbal threats on Tuesday by lambasting President Park Geun-hye for stressing the need to guard against the North during a security meeting.
On Monday, President Park cautioned against complacency in defending against North Korean provocations during a National Security Council (NSC) meeting held at Cheong Wa Dae's crisis room, known as the "underground bunker," the first meeting of its kind since her inauguration in February.
The meeting was timed with the beginning of the joint South Korea-U.S. annual military exercise Ulchi Freedom Guardian (UFG) for a 12-day run, which involves 50,000 South Korean troops and 30,000 U.S. soldiers, 3,000 of them from overseas bases.
Park's remarks "chill the hard-won atmosphere for dialogue" between the two Koreas, and "enhancing war preparedness while trumpeting about dialogue and peace" is "an agitation for extreme confrontation," the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea said in a statement carried out by the North's official news agency, the Korean Central News Agency.
Pyongyang also said Seoul should not misjudge "its sincerity and patience," warning that the inter-Korean ties will "go back to the worst point" and to cause "uncontrollably catastrophic consequences."
The North's criticism came after inter-Korean relations have shown signs of improvement recently, with the two sides reaching a breakthrough deal last week to reopen a joint industrial complex in the North's border city of Gaeseong.
The sides are also scheduled to hold talks this week on setting up family reunions for those that were separated by the peninsula's division.
North Korea has long balked at the joint maneuvers, claiming that they amount to a rehearsal for an invasion of the communist country. Seoul and Washington have countered that the drill is defensive in nature.
The North appeared to depart from its past policy this year, as it remained silent on Monday over the launch of the exercise.
Though Pyongyang lashed out at Park in the statement, it did not mention the U.S. over the issue.
Pyongyang had spiked tensions in March and April during the year's first major joint military exercises between Seoul and Washington, called the Key Resolve and Foal Eagle, by cutting off emergency cross-border hotlines and threatening to nullify the Armistice Agreement that halted the 1950-53 Korean War. (Yonhap News)
